Memory as archetype: Architectonic Dramatization as Means of Constructing Presence

Seminario di Teoria della Ricerca Architettonica e Urbana A.A. 2017 Prof. Alessandra Capuano Studente Diana Michiu-Dinescu, 1737936

Memory as archetype:

Architectonic dramatization as means of constructing presence in the houses of

Peter Zumthor, Aldo Rossi, Herzog & de Meuron

Index

• Abstract • Introduction • Peter Zumthor, Home and Studio, Haldenstein, CH 2005 • Aldo Rossi, Project for Student’s Residences, Chieti, IT 1976 • Herzog & de Meuron, The Blue House, Oberwill, CH 1979 • Conclusion • Bibliography • Glossary of plans

Abstract

This essay explores the ways memory is used in the works of Peter Zumthor, Aldo Rossi and Herzog & de Meuron as a tool for creating authentic architecture. In this instance, memory refers especially to primordial recollections like the ones of the childhood home as an autobiographical starting point from which an architecture of the emotional space rather than that of pure form derives.

Keywords

house, type, authenticity

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Nick Cave, 2014 20000 Days on Earth

„My biggest fear is losing memory because memory is what we are. Your very soul and your very reason to be alive is tied up in memory.“

Diana Michiu, 1996 child’s drawing

Introduction

„A house that has been experienced is not an inert box“ *1 writes G. Bachelard in „The Poetics of Space“. In his book, he links memory to the imagination, describing houses in terms of virtues and not as mere objects. Since memory is attached to a chosen spot, houses become a portal for metaphors of the imagination. „The childhood house is the shelter of imagination itself!“*2, as it represents the first universe for young children. It’s space shapes all subsequent knowledge of other spaces.

In „Geografie della memoria“, A. Tarpino takes this concept even further, declaring the first home as a mythological archetype of human order against outsides disorder *3 and describing it as a very good mediator of memory because it links the sphere of recollection with the one of experience.*4 Because of its ability to be experienced immediately, the architectural object leaves a deeper impression on the mind.

Remembering and observing often apply the same language that is full of impulses. What can i actually remember, if not that, which i have already experienced?

*1 BACHELARD G., The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Boston 1994, pg. 16 *2 ibid., pg. 7 *3 TARPINO A., Geografie della memoria. Case, rovine, ogetti quotidiani, Einaudi, Roma 2008, pg. 26 *4 ibid., pg. 45 Teoria della Ricerca Architettonica e Urbana - MEMORIA, Diana Michiu-Dinescu 1737936

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P. ZUMTHOR Home and Studio Haldenstein, CH 2005

Peter Zumthor is one of the architects that understand experience as a form of knowledge. „[Childhood memories] contain the deepest architectural experience that i know“ *5, he declares in his book „Thinking Architecture“.

In total conformity with its surroundings, his own home and studio integrates traditional existing structures with new additions constructed in concrete, glass and steel. They are organized around a patio, which connects the indoor and outdoor, living and working spaces. The sections of each wing recall the archetypal silhouette of the house with the double-pitched roof. On the north side, towards the mountains and the river, large windows look out at a shallow inlet environment. Zumthor keeps his atelier in this humble, remote location in order to ensure his experience of „presence“: “Every once in a while, I get this feeling of presence. Sometimes in me, but definitely in the mountains. If I look at these rocks, those stones, I get a feeling of presence, of space, of material.” *6 -thus presence is something that moves us. He defines this sentiment as the „magic of the real“. *7 and it is partly the result of intuitive work and sensitivities.

relationship between indoor and outdoor space

orientation towards the mountains

living working

inner courtyard

Zumthor places the self at the heart of the architectural experience. His own memories become the defining elements in his aesthetic, whether he recalls images from his training as an architect, or from the childhood*8. Grasping the physical, not the intellectual, aspects of architecture, he pushes them as far into the realm of sensory experience as they can go.

Peter Zumthor, 2006 Atmospheres

„What always comes to mind first are the sounds when I was a boy, the noises my mother made in the kitchen.

They made me feel happy.“*9

*5ZUMTHOR P., Thinking Architecture, Birkhäuser, Basel 1999, pg. 10 *6ZUMTHOR P. Seven Personal Observations on Presence In Architecture, 03 Dec 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBKcmspiVsY (last accessed on 12.06.2017) 7 * ZUMTHOR P., Atmospheres, Birkhäuser, Basel 2006, pg. 18 *8ZUMTHOR P., Thinking Architecture, Birkhäuser, Basel 1999, pg. 9 *9ZUMTHOR P., Atmospheres, Birkhäuser, Basel 2006, pg. 29 Teoria della Ricerca Architettonica e Urbana - MEMORIA, Diana Michiu-Dinescu 1737936

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Memory guides design. Most of the images and moods originate from subjective experiences. Their meanings create a wealth of visual forms and atmospheres. When the building nears completion, the initial images fade into the background and it’s own history begins*10. new wing containing the living areas; overall view of the property; interior with working space; japanese-inspired inner courtyard; existing structure (c) Walter Mair and Peter Zumthor

A. Rossi Project for Student’s Residences Chieti, IT 1976

Aldo Rossi’s process follows a reinterpretation of memory that allows him to create clear structures infused with meaning. The articulation of this exercise consists in an elaborate alphabet of forms (typologies). He uses type-forms to create classifications which he then applies on an urban scale.

The starting point is always the relationship to the specific location. Rossi calls it the „locus“ *11, the conditioning factor which affects all architectural interventions. This itself is a concept related to memory, being it collective or individual.

The project for a 1976 competition for students Residences in Chieti shows perfectly how Rossi implements a type operated through memory (individual/collective) to transport meaning from the original context

*10ZUMTHOR P., Thinking Architecture, Birkhäuser, Basel 1999, pg. 25 *11ROSSI A., The Architecture of the City, The MIT Press, Cambridge 1982, pg. 103 Teoria della Ricerca Architettonica e Urbana - MEMORIA, Diana Michiu-Dinescu 1737936

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to a new site and situation.

He does so by following two main operations: dislocation of place and dissolution of scale. *12 Firstly, the type-form of the beach cabin, already established in the collective Italian memory is displaced from the shores of the island of Elba to Chieti, Abruzzo. Dislocating the type allows the architect to modify the context.

Secondly, the scale is being altered, turning the single beach cabins into student apartments, creating an ensemble of urban proportions.

The houses are disposed in several rows - of which the rear ones at a two-story height - around a greenhouse. While the glass-walled court of the Lichthof University of Zürich also served as an inspiration for the central palm house *13, all of the architectural objects feature the same archetypal shape of the gabled-roofed house. section through the housing complex

Aldo Rossi, concept sketch of the student’s housing project in Chieti, including the beach cabins on the Elba; (c)Aldo Rossi foundation the court of the Lichthof University in Zürich photographed by Rossi’s friend, Heinrich Helfenstein (c)Heinrich Helfenstein

Rossi’s analogical process involves an allusion of the house as a microcosm for the intervention in a city-scale. Thus we can say that type has a communicative quality: like language, it fulfills a communicative and social role, linking tradition with the present while evoking new meanings.

However there is a more dramatic reasoning underneath the design aswell. In his „Scientific autobiography“, the architect reveals that the cabins on the island of Elba represent the „moments of happiness, memories of a joyful youth and the remembrance of places dear to

*12JO, S., Aldo Rossi: Architecture and Memory, Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering, Vol.2/Nr.1, Busan 2003, pg. 234 *13 ROSSI A., A Scientific Autobiography, The MIT Press, Cambridge 1981, pg. 8 Teoria della Ricerca Architettonica e Urbana - MEMORIA, Diana Michiu-Dinescu 1737936

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[him], while being on vacation“ and that the intention was to include the „search for happiness as a condition to maturity“*14 into the project.

Aldo Rossi, A Scientific Autobiography

„The small house seems to be without a place, because the locus is inside. It is identified with whoever lives in the house.“*15 „Nothing could take away this private, personal character of identification with the body, with undressing and getting dressed again.“*16, he adds - a thought that captures the idea that the body remembers, not only the mind. *17

Aldo Rossi, sketch and physical model of the student’s housing project in Chieti (c)Aldo Rossi foundation

Herzog & de Meuron The Blue House Oberwill, CH 1979

The Swiss duo describe their architectural approach as phenomenological. Their starting point is the intuitive and unconditional experience on site. This first operation has to do with the „locus“ (a term pinned by A. Rossi, their former university professor) and is deeply related to the memory and the specificity of the site.

One of the earliest works by Herzog & de Meuron, “Blue House” can be seen as an archetypal building. It simultaneously aligns and distances itself from the surrounding suburban houses.

Formally, it is similar to its neighbors, holding the same traditional profile (a form which they often revisit, like in the stacked-up composition of the “Vitra House” in Weil am Rhein). Built for a young family with one child, the house features very small spaces: the kitchen is reduced to its very basics, a narrow curved metal staircase winds its way up to the upper floor with one bedroom and a bathroom, a child’s bedroom and a small playroom. The living room has some built in furniture and opens up to the garden by means of a loggia-like balcony.*18

*14 ROSSI A., A Scientific Autobiography, The MIT Press, Cambridge 1981, pg. 8 *15 ibid., pg. 42 *16 ibid., pg. 42 *17 BACHELARD G., The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Boston 1994, Introduction pg viii *18 Herzog & de Meuron official website, https://www.herzogdemeuron.com Teoria della Ricerca Architettonica e Urbana - MEMORIA, Diana Michiu-Dinescu 1737936

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comparison of the section with a prototype of the Rossi beach cabin

Its main distinguishing feature is the color of its facade - Yves Klein blue. „It shows that we do not choose colors primarily according to aesthetic preference, but rather according to physical sensual content.“*19 The solid north facade installs the appearance of strength and volume. Its main openings, the round windows, are an obvious reference to Aldo Rossi’s architecture.

There are certain similarities to Rossi’s design process aswell, like the alteration of context and the modification in scale. At a closer look, the proportions of the blue house correspond exactly to the ones of the beach cabins on the Elba, their professor’s trademark. However, they distance themselves from the strict one-sided perception of typology that my seem slightly arbitrary.

By implementing the bold color, the architects create a strong new identity and a sense of tension. It also represents a way to visually widen out the narrow appearance of the house in a dematerialization effort.*20 They declare in an interview for S. Von Moos: Herzog & de Meuron interview, 1985

„This corresponds to a kind of a dramaturgy which we have seen in the film medium.“*21

the immaterial appearance of the house in the context of it’s surroundings

*19Appearance and Injury, Herzog & de Meuron interviewed by Stanislaus von Moos, http://socks-studio.com *20URSPRUNG P., Genealogie: Aldo Rossi und Herzog & de Meuron, Tec21 Heft 137, Nr. 25/2011, Zürich 2011, pg. 30 *21Appearance and Injury, Herzog & de Meuron interviewed by Stanislaus von Moos, http://socks-studio.com Teoria della Ricerca Architettonica e Urbana - MEMORIA, Diana Michiu-Dinescu 1737936

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general view of the house; inner view with interior metal staircase (c) Margherita Spiluttini

Conclusion

„Che cosa si puó ricordare, infatti, se non ció che giá si conosce?“*22 („What can one actually remember, if not that, which is already known?“ writes A. Tarpino, suggesting that our memories are at the same time knowledge. Expanding this idea to the practice of architecture, one can only design from that which one has experienced. „Forgetting is associated with the loss of our identity.“*23 Thus Rossi’s and his former student’s Peter Zumthor and Herzog & de Meuron architectural efforts are characterized by counteracting the degradation of identity – by seeking the substance in architecture.

They all speak the language of the pathos. The sources that inspired the built forms of Herzog & de Meuron with their „rude“ conformity towards surroundings achieve a dramatic effect. Rossi’s dramatization consists in dislocating the context of memory-charged typologies creating architecture that is able to evoke emotions and can thus make the unfamiliar seem familiar. Zumthor’s architecture is an over-sensitized dramatization of what presence could be where the goal is an architecture that sets out from and returns to real things.

When emotions become memory, the architectural process seeks to reach that memory. Memory, this autobiographical starting point with a very wide interpretative flexibility, becomes a valuable means for creating architectonic structures rich with meaning. However different the constructed results may be from a formal viewpoint, they succeed in creating presence and not simply spaces of pure form.

Karl Jung in a letter to Freud

„Logical thought is thinking in words, analogical thought is sensed, yet unreal, imagined, yet silent. It is archaic, unexpressed, and practically inexpressible in words.“

*22 TARPINO A., Geografie della memoria. Case, rovine, ogetti quotidiani, Einaudi, Roma 2008, pg. 45 *23 ROSSI A., A Scientific Autobiography, The MIT Press, Cambridge 1981, pg. 41 Teoria della Ricerca Architettonica e Urbana - MEMORIA, Diana Michiu-Dinescu 1737936

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Bibliography

BACHELARD G., The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Boston 1994 CASTAGNI S., FERRARI M., Aldo Rossi-Le cabine dell’Elba, Itinerari di Architettura Moderna, Lo Scoglio Nr. 74/05 , Livorno 2005 JO, S., Aldo Rossi: Architecture and Memory, Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering, Vol.2/Nr.1, Busan 2003 MACK G., Herzog & de Meuron 1978-1988: The Complete Works (Volume 1),Birkhäuser, Basel, 1997 ROSSI A., The Architecture of the City, The MIT Press, Cambridge 1982 ROSSI A., A Scientific Autobiography, The MIT Press, Cambridge 1981 TARPINO A., Geografie della memoria. Case, rovine, ogetti quotidiani, Einaudi, Roma 2008 URSPRUNG P., Genealogie: Aldo Rossi und Herzog & de Meuron, Tec21 Heft 137, Nr. 25/2011, Zürich 2011 URSPRUNG P. (Ed.), Herzog & de Meuron: Natural History, Springer Science & Business Media, Basel 2005 ZUMTHOR P., Thinking Architecture, Birkhäuser, Basel 1999 ZUMTHOR P., Atmospheres, Birkhäuser, Basel 2006

Weblinks

Appearance and Injury, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron interviewed by Stanislaus von Moos http://socks-studio.com/2016/10/21/the-blue-house-by-herzog-demeuron-1979-80-and-an-interview-by-stanislaus-von-moos/ (last accessed 12.06.2017) Peter Zumthor: Seven Personal Observations on Presence In Architecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBKcmspiVsY (last accessed 12.06.2017) Herzog & de Meuron official website

https://www.herzogdemeuron.com/index/projects/completeworks/001-025/005-blue-house.html (last accessed 12.06.2017) Arduino Cantafora, intervista su Aldo Rossi di Nicolò Ornaghi e Francesco Zorzi http://www.gizmoweb.org/2015/12/arduino-cantafora-intervista-su-aldo-rossi/ (last accessed 12.06.2017)

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Glossary of plans P. ZUMTHOR Home and Studio Haldenstein, CH 2005 (c) Zumthor Architects

A. Rossi Project for Student’s Residences Chieti, IT 1976 (c) Claudia Tinazzi

Herzog & de Meuron The Blue House Oberwill, CH 1979 (c) Herzog & de Meuron

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